Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 495 posts

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#401

Post by jillesvangurp »

refurb wrote: post #36

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it odd that Gates is the go to source for public health issues. His biggest contribution is money, which pays for really smart people to tackle these issues. So why not talk to the really smart people he hired?

Because he's not just randomly throwing money around and has a well earned reputation for getting a decent return on his investments: he tends to spend money on things that work. So given that he's actively spending money and getting results, his perspective on what things need to be invested in and why is very interesting.

There are plenty of rich philanthropists but very few with Gates's level of understanding and ability to make good policy choices.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#402

Post by cranekam »

philliphaydon wrote: post #399
Buge wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you or your correspondent view a web page related to the product before or after the conversation? Viewing web pages is quite common. Facebook also has a button next to ads saying why you were shown the ad. What does that say? Also the causation might be in the other direction. You and your correspondent might have seen an ad that then caused you to have the conversation.

Nope. So my current apartment is on the 28th floor. It's common to have gates/grills on the windows here in Singapore. But this apartment, AFAIK the family didn't have kids so they never got it done. So I messaged my agent and said "i love the apartment but the windows don't have any gates or safety catches, my understanding is gates are pretty expensive, would it be possible to atleast get safety catches on the wind…

Are you sure you haven’t previously searched for window gates? Searching for things is so second nature by now that half the time we don’t even know we’re doing it.

Also, WhatsApp is definitely e2e encrypted. I worked there and saw the implementation (and the difficulties it causes for things like blocking spam/nasties) myself.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#403

Post by cranekam »

Buge wrote: post #400
philliphaydon wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. So my current apartment is on the 28th floor. It's common to have gates/grills on the windows here in Singapore. But this apartment, AFAIK the family didn't have kids so they never got it done. So I messaged my agent and said "i love the apartment but the windows don't have any gates or safety catches, my understanding is gates are pretty expensive, would it be possible to atleast get safety catches on the wind…

Your landlord might have immediately googled them and viewed some sites about them. And do you and your landlord have the same internet connection? How did you know gates are expensive?

Sharing an internet connection isn’t enough for ads tracking, otherwise everyone behind the same NAT would get the same ads.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#404

Post by [deleted] »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #397
tptacek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating about this question is that it (inevitably!) commands the top of the HN thread with a discussion of the least interesting thing in the article. It's an article about COVID and Facebook, and here we're recapitulating the end-to-end encryption debate for the 8-zillionth time.

HN is as much of an echo chamber as any other internet forum. 90% of the time you can predict in advance what the top-voted comment is going to be. Most of the time it will be some pointless quibbling about how the subject line technically isn't correct somehow. The rest of the time it'll be about one of the three or four hobby horses of HN. "I don't use social media", "WFH has no flaws", "whiteboard interviews are w…

[deleted]

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#405

Post by frandroid »

3131s wrote: post #368
mdoms wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates is a public health expert. He has been working on these problems with some of the smartest minds in the field for decades now. How long does someone need to be working on a problem before they're worthy of being a "go to source", in your opinion?

It doesn't matter how long. The "go-to" source should have integrity, along with no financial stake in the issues at hand.

A financial stake is usually about making a profit. The Gates Foundation is not going to make any profit here, it's looking at funding vaccines at super low cost and giving them away or the manufacturer selling them for as little as possible to governments who would give them away. I hated Gates the monopolist and the foundation has messed up on a few questions (see: efforts in Education), but how in hell can you say that it has a financial stake? If anything, the most successful people are at finding a solution, the more he's going to deplete the coffers of the Foundation, as a vaccine manufacturing force multiplier.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#406

Post by robomartin »

tptacek wrote: post #207
ani-ani wrote: post #93

He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: " And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger] ". Quite literally, encrypted comm…

What's frustrating about this question is that it (inevitably!) commands the top of the HN thread with a discussion of the least interesting thing in the article. It's an article about COVID and Facebook, and here we're recapitulating the end-to-end encryption debate for the 8-zillionth time.

@tptacek

This is one of the reasons for which I proposed that HN, by default, display discussions collapsed down to first branches. Just show the text for the first branches and collapse their corresponding conversations. Readers would only expand branches they find relevant or interesting and comment within them.

You could take this one step further and only show the first two lines (or n characters) of first branch comments. This would force a style where authors would have to provide a two line summary of their comment (if it is a first branch comment) in order to facilitate scanning. With this approach the list of first branches would almost look like the HN home page, where you can quickly scan the short titles and expand topics of interest.

To address your comment directly, if the inevitable makes it to the top of the first branch list it will be easy to scan other first branches on the same page without having to scroll or take any action. This might promote participation in other threads within the conversation and maybe even the bubbling-up of more "worthy" contenders for the top first branch.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#407

Post by tasogare »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #401
refurb wrote: post #36

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it odd that Gates is the go to source for public health issues. His biggest contribution is money, which pays for really smart people to tackle these issues. So why not talk to the really smart people he hired?

Because he's not just randomly throwing money around and has a well earned reputation for getting a decent return on his investments: he tends to spend money on things that work. So given that he's actively spending money and getting results, his perspective on what things need to be invested in and why is very interesting. There are plenty of rich philanthropists but very few with Gates's level of understanding and…

> he tends to spend money on things that work

Like on WHO? The organization that lied for months about the potentiality of the covid to become a pandemic and that is excluding on political ground the country that handle best the virus (Taiwan). By still sponsoring this China’s lying organization, Bill Gates lost credibility in my eyes.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#408

Post by waihtis »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #397
tptacek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating about this question is that it (inevitably!) commands the top of the HN thread with a discussion of the least interesting thing in the article. It's an article about COVID and Facebook, and here we're recapitulating the end-to-end encryption debate for the 8-zillionth time.

HN is as much of an echo chamber as any other internet forum. 90% of the time you can predict in advance what the top-voted comment is going to be. Most of the time it will be some pointless quibbling about how the subject line technically isn't correct somehow. The rest of the time it'll be about one of the three or four hobby horses of HN. "I don't use social media", "WFH has no flaws", "whiteboard interviews are w…

Any community will have an echo chamber, that's part of the basic human fabric. It's still a great forum (and you probably think so also.)

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#409

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

tptacek wrote: post #207
ani-ani wrote: post #93

He is easily one of the least bullshit-y sources when it comes to handling of COVID. But then there's this right in the middle of the interview: " And when you have [posts] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger] ". Quite literally, encrypted comm…

What's frustrating about this question is that it (inevitably!) commands the top of the HN thread with a discussion of the least interesting thing in the article. It's an article about COVID and Facebook, and here we're recapitulating the end-to-end encryption debate for the 8-zillionth time.

In defense of the OP, fair balance: a counter complaint

What is frustrating about this comment is that it inevitably commands the top of the HN thread, "for the 8-zillionth time", because its author's moniker automatically attracts "upvotes" due its familiarity, not because the comment is the most interesting.

That said, this comment is probably worthy of being at the top since the E2E debate is indeed a tired one and that sentiment probably has many sympathisers. However, as someone else pointed out, Gates brought this up, not HN. And it does directly relate to discussions about COVID on Facebook (WhatsApp) and the ability to censor them. Of course, there is also the argument that newcomers to HN will not know all the past discussions of E2E, nor are they expected to read them before commenting. We regularly see HN re-post items that have previously been submitted, re-opening discussions that are old hat, inviting us to re-hash them.

While some readers may grow tired of seeing the same topics discussed over and over again, other readers may grow tired of seeing the same usernames at the top of so many threads, over and over again, no matter what their comments.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates on Covid, social media

#410

Post by bsaul »

cranekam wrote: post #402
philliphaydon wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. So my current apartment is on the 28th floor. It's common to have gates/grills on the windows here in Singapore. But this apartment, AFAIK the family didn't have kids so they never got it done. So I messaged my agent and said "i love the apartment but the windows don't have any gates or safety catches, my understanding is gates are pretty expensive, would it be possible to atleast get safety catches on the wind…

Are you sure you haven’t previously searched for window gates? Searching for things is so second nature by now that half the time we don’t even know we’re doing it. Also, WhatsApp is definitely e2e encrypted. I worked there and saw the implementation (and the difficulties it causes for things like blocking spam/nasties) myself.

couldn't have they added some kind of mechanidm to extract unusual words in the app itself to feed a separate stream of "interests" ? It doesn't even have to be sent over the network. Could be a shared file on an app group that apps like facebook read and process.
Post reply on HN